quickest way to get started with cairo

I have taken passing shots at learning Cairo in the past, but always moved on in favor of some other graphics library. My problem is that I can't find a good tutorial that gives me a simple display for my surface. I have always ended up digging through GTK or QT documentation about things that have nothing to do with what I want to do. I want to learn Cairo, not a massive OO architecture.

What is a bare bones wrapper to give me a cross-platform window with a Cairo canvas to draw on?